


A Shadow, Passing Through

by todisturbtheuniverse



Series: Tongues Will Wag [7]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Family, Family Dynamics, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-21
Updated: 2017-08-21
Packaged: 2018-12-18 09:58:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11871951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: Mid-Act 2: Hawke and Isabela enjoy a spot of people-watching in the middle of the night. Leandra makes a few assumptions.





	A Shadow, Passing Through

**Author's Note:**

> Will I ever truly stop writing fic for this six-year-old game? Probably not, friends. Probably not.

Across the alley, the strange scene in a neighboring Hightown mansion unfolded.

It was a little lewd to be watching him like this. Hawke didn’t know his name, though surely her mother had mentioned it in passing a dozen times. No, all she knew about the man was that he forgot to—or chose not to—close his curtains.

Well, and one other thing. He went about all his business in that room stark naked.

She didn’t gossip about him, or anything. Besides, no naked man in a window would distract Hightown from watching Hawke like a...well, like a hawk. Three years since she’d bought back the estate, and still the resident nobles tittered behind their hands at the return of the Amells. For a while there at the start, she’d thought that it bothered Mother, but then she saw Leandra Hawke née Amell in action at some party or other, and realized she actually _enjoyed_ crossing barbed words with the neighbors.

Let her have her fun. Hawke would have her own.

“Andraste’s arsecheeks,” Isabela hissed, leaning closer to Hawke from her chair. “What is he _doing_?” She shoveled another handful of dried fruit and some spiced nuts into her mouth, then pointed as if Hawke couldn’t see.

Well, Hawke didn’t gossip about the man to the other _nobles_. Just to Isabela. Isabela, who currently had a sheet recklessly tied around her otherwise bare body like a blood-red gown. It suited her. Hawke thought the same every time she got Isabela beneath her on those sheets, however briefly.

The man was punching the air. From this distance, it was hard to tell, but his form looked passing fair. He wasn’t one of those nobles who’d let himself go to seed. No, Hawke guessed he had a military background, and he kept up this odd version of his old routine whenever he got the chance. For a man of more than forty, he looked very fit. If he was starting to bald, she couldn’t see it from here.

“We ought to get a looking-glass,” Isabela said, a touch dreamily, as he moved smoothly into a series of kicks. Even at a distance, Hawke thought she saw something flapping around. She had to smother a laugh. “I bet he has a great arse. Hard to tell all the details from here.”

“You are irredeemable,” Hawke said, but she was smirking. She could have been accused of the same; she was watching Isabela as avidly as Isabela watched the man. The touch of the silvery moonlight gilding her collarbone, the swell of her breasts above the sheet, caressing the jewelry still fastened to her ears and setting it aglow. “There’s a perfectly fine arse right here, plenty easy to see.”

Isabela waved this off. “Spoilsport. I’ll get to you in a moment.”

Hawke _did_ snicker at that, and though she went on watching Isabela as Isabela watched the man, she still heard it when a door—too nearby for comfort—creaked.

Her stomach plummeted at the same instant that her heart jumped to her throat. She lurched out of her chair and came around the back to intercept whoever was awake at this hour, though the cause was already lost; even Isabela was not fast enough to dart back to Hawke’s bedroom, leaving no evidence of her presence. If Hawke was lucky, it would just be Bodahn, who could be counted upon to—

Mother stepped out from the hallway, drawing a last cinch in the tie of her robe tight. Hawke stopped dead. Isabela, behind her, had gone quiet. Mother had sometimes been markedly oblivious—usually in times of deep grief, Hawke could grudgingly admit—but now her eyes roamed, sharp, over the scene before her: the thick wine glasses on the windowsill, the undressed pirate on the chair, lingering on the askew collar of Hawke’s robe.

“Mother,” she said, feebly trying to turn on the charm that she used so easily on strangers. “Sorry if we woke you, we were just—”

“Spying on the neighbors?” Mother replied, rather shrewdly.

“Well,” Hawke said, in her defense, “he does leave the curtains open.”

Mother _tsk_ ed, though there was a smile playing around her mouth as she looked over the pair of them again.

_Don’t_ , Hawke thought, desperately. _Don’t misinterpret, this isn’t what you think—_

“I was up reading,” she continued. “I always have trouble sleeping when you’re out on a job. I thought I’d go to sleep when I heard you come in, but I’d gotten wrapped up in the story. Would you help me with the tea, since we have a guest?”

Her eyes danced. It had been a damn long time since her mother had teased her, and the timing could _not_ have been worse.

Isabela had gotten up, holding the sheet firm around herself. “Don’t trouble yourself on my account—” she began, but Mother cut her off.

“Nonsense, no trouble at all. It may be the middle of the night, but that’s no cause for poor hospitality. Marian?”

She turned away to glide down the stairs. Hawke yanked her robe straight, shot a mortified glance at Isabela—who, predictably, just chuckled at her and winked, tying the sheet a little more securely about herself—and followed her mother down to the kitchen.

She was a few paces behind when Mother whirled to face her, the door to the kitchen shutting behind Hawke. Her face was practically aglow. This cause was already lost, Hawke could see that much. Her mother thought she knew something very valuable indeed.

She knew _something_ , alright. Something Hawke would rather she didn’t. She didn’t know what lie would be good to tell, here, one that wouldn’t make things worse than they already were. For once, her brain was frantic and dry of cover-up stories. It ground fruitlessly against itself, trying to reconcile the meeting of two very different worlds.

“You could have _told_ me,” she said, in a hushed but excited whisper that simultaneously scolded. “I’d never have set up that date with Gibsons’ boy if you just said—”

“It’s not what you think,” Marian interrupted, quickly as she could.

Mother propped her hands on her hips, actually tapped her foot on the ground. “Young lady—”

“I would hardly say I qualify as _young_ anymore—”

“—I may be well past the point of such dalliances, but I know what they look like.” Her smile had become nearly a grin, now. Hawke’s heart clenched. Even after all they’d gone through—all the sniping they’d done at one another, all the hard words and harder losses—her mother was pleased, genuinely pleased, that Hawke seemed to have found happiness.

She’d often wondered these past three years if her mother loved her still. What a wretched way to find out.

“We should have had her for dinner!” she continued on. “I could have prepared a pie! Well, we’ll just have to set a…”

Though the kitchen was dim, perhaps Hawke’s lingering silence gave her away. Mother paused in her celebrations to peer at Hawke’s face, coming a few steps closer.

“Marian?” she asked, a note of concern entering her voice now. “What is it?”

Hawke’s eyes prickled, but she blinked this brief appearance of tears away. “It’s not like that, Mama,” she said, adding another little strange thing to the pile of strange things on this strange night; how long had it been since that childhood endearment had passed her lips? “Isabela and I are friends, and maybe there are...dalliances, as you so succinctly put it, but it’s not, ah, more. Just a bit of fun.”

Her voice passed for casual, but her mother looked at her and saw...something. Hawke wasn’t sure exactly what, just that her mother hadn’t looked at her quite like that since she was still young enough to fall down and skin her knees. Something soft and kind and sad.

“I see,” she said. “Oh, my poor girl.”

“Nothing _poor_ about me,” Hawke protested. “I’m perfectly...I know what I’m doing.”

“And _I_ know exactly what a Hawke in love looks like.” Mother reached up and patted her cheek. “Well, don’t you worry. She’ll come around. I’m sure of it.”

On impulse—and it was an impulse that she’d not had in some time, so it struck Hawke as fair significant—she reached out and hugged her mother, not a perfunctory thing that she immediately tried to squirm out of but a warm, encompassing bear hug. And her mother hugged her back, just as warmly. Hawke swiped at her eyes as they pulled apart and tried to unstick her throat to say something, anything, but failed.

“I’ll make some tea, put together something better than dried fruit for the two of you,” she said. “And a nice cool cloth for your eyes. Then you can get back to your affairs.”

Hawke managed a laugh, a sort of mangled one. Mother brought over a cool, damp cloth; while Hawke swiped away the evidence of her brief emotional turmoil with it, Mother bustled around the kitchen, putting together the tea tray in the deep quiet of midnight.

Hawke already knew what she would find upstairs, and find it she did: the chairs returned to her room, the bottle of wine and accompanying glasses back on her desk, the window just slightly ajar. On the roof across the way, she saw a shadow move, passing over the eaves.

_Turn around_ , she prayed, a plea she didn’t usually allow herself, but a shadow seemed to be passing over her heart, too, and she wanted to chase it off. _Please, turn around._

But the shadow darted away, out of sight. For a moment, Hawke considered the merits of returning to the business documents she was supposed to be reviewing for Varric, to maybe dosing her tea with whiskey and whiling away the hours until dawn with her aching heart, alone.

Then she turned and followed another impulse instead, backtracking down the hall to her mother’s room. Balancing the tea tray on one hand, she knocked. Mother was back in bed with her book and cup of tea, and she frowned when Hawke came in.

“Gone,” Hawke said to her unanswered question; her mother's lips twisted in a disappointed frown. “She’s not much for formality, Isabela.” She shook her head. “I thought we might…” She held the tray out, a lost little gesture like some kind of peace offering.

There had been precious little peace between them, these last few years, but those brief moments in the kitchen had made Hawke wish for it.

Smiling just slightly now, her mother patted the bed beside her. “With all that’s happened, I’m having trouble focusing on my book, anyway.”

It was not the night that Hawke had wanted, but it was not a bad thing, either. They poured tea for one another until the kettle ran out and ate scones that crumbled from their fingertips. Hawke told her about their job from earlier that evening, not glossing over the particulars, for once, and her mother told her what the naked man across the way had been like as a boy. Hawke said little more of Isabela, but...maybe she would. Someday.

She had given up a lot of things for lost as they fled Ferelden, more in the Deep Roads. Maybe some of them weren’t yet lost forever.


End file.
